Tag Archives: Train

Following up on my previous article introducing LEGO’s 9V system and their Power Functions (PF) system, I’m going to go a little more in depth about building hybrid systems that utilize both PF battery packs and 9V train track. I’ve developed and iterated through several different systems that combine the best of both and have come up with several easy to implement systems. Anyone with a few dollars, a volt meter and a soldering iron can hack together one of these hybrids in a matter of hours. Continue reading Hybrid PF/9V Systems→

Central Railroad of New Jersey 1940’s Commuter Train in LEGO

This is my LEGO model of a 1940’s Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train. This train is typical of those that made up the CNJ’s short haul commuter service in the first half of the 20th century. You may have already seen the locomotive in my recent article on Vinyl Decals, or on a recent youtube livestream. Now that the locomotive is properly decaled, I finally took some time to photograph the whole train and write this article.

Full CNJ commuter train.

The seeds for building this train were planted several years ago while on a trip to visit Steamtown National Historic Site. While there one of the locomotives that caught my attention was an odd little Canadian National engine, no. 47. Canadian National no. 47 is what is referred to as a “Suburban” locomotive. These locomotives were built for short haul service on commuter lines. The Suburban type had its tender, carrying coal and water, integrated with the main frame of the locomotive, rather than having a separate “tender” car semi-permanently coupled to the locomotive. This gave the locomotive excellent dual directional capability, handy for when there were no provisions for turn the engine around at the end of it’s run. It was not uncommon to see these engines running backwards pulling their train on a return trip.

In my first article in my series on decals for LEGO® trains, I covered some popular model RR manufacturer’s who make decals suitable for use with LEGO trains. This time I want to highlight one of the options for making your own custom decals for LEGO trains, vinyl decals. This is a newer option that I’ve come across but it offers some great possibilities.

The story of how Maci’s Monograms got side tracked into LEGO decals.

This all started some time ago when I came across a post on Facebook about some decals that LOLUG – Lincoln/Omaha LEGO User Group had made using cut vinyl. My friend and fellow train builder Nate Flood is a member of LOLUG and he quickly brought me up to speed on them. As it turns out, Nate’s daughter Maci is the one who produced the decals, and she has started her own business for the purpose.

When you order vinyl decals from Maci’s Monograms, you get the decals, a nice printed instruction sheet showing you how to apply them, and a little thank you note. It makes for a great presentation when you open the package. Locomotive NOT included.

2 weeks ago I wrote about the Barriger Library and the wonderful historical resource it provides for North American railroading. Today I want to point out another great flickr library that myself and several of my fellow LEGO train builders have been drawing inspiration from. The JJ Young, Jr Library.

I have been a huge fan of Maciej Drwięga and his LEGO modeling for a few years now. Maciej’s train station layout is quite impressive, and deserving of it’s own article. But I wanted to focus on one of his latest models today.

Today I would like to draw some attention to one of the coolest Flickr accounts I’ve come across in some time. This one does not have any LEGO train content, but at it’s core, it is proving to be an incredible resource for modeling North American railroads.

This will be the first in a series of articles about my process of building a LEGO steam locomotive. I intend to cover a variety of topics in this series including research, the use of custom elements, aftermarket electrical devices, and building techniques. While I will focus on a specific locomotive project I am currently working on, this series will not include a full set of step-by-step instructions to that locomotive. My intention is to share some experiences and techniques that I hope people can apply to any steam locomotive project, and perhaps other types of LEGO models as well. At any rate, my designs are usually pretty fragile and don’t really lend themselves to redistribution via instructions. Instead, I will lay out my approach to building a steam locomotive and why I think it is effective. I hope that this will help people who are struggling with what I think is a particularly difficult type of model to build or, at least, be of some interest to the readers of this site.

After the previous post on Ararat 1972 and Cale’s piece on Brick Model Railroading as such, I think the pieces are now set for the next installment in the series of inspiring layouts: Corfe Castle Station by Carl Greatrix. Lately, Carl has been the guy who has brought you the Caterham Seven and a lot of the visuals in the recent Lego games, but next to this, he is also a real trainhead and a lover of Scale Modelling. With the Corfe Castle Station layout, he had decided to fuse both of these to create an unique layout.

Corfe Castle Station – the eye-catcher and starting point of the layoutThe (almost finished) layout at STEAM 2011

The first thing that you notice when looking at Corfe Castle Station is that it follows a typical “British” approach. At least, that’s how it looks like for me after having read so many British Model Railroading Magazines (like Railway Modeller) when I was young. This means that we are looking at two mainline tracks and a siding, with a station as the main visual element. In fact, it’s just a very big diorama. The layout is an oval of which more than half is the fiddle yard and thus not part of the diorama. So, just as with Ararat 1972, there is no large yard where you can show off your trains. However, it does have two continuous loops which are ideal to show of your trains in high speed!

Overview of the layout – Two ovals and a fiddle yard.

What sets this layout apart of most other Lego Railway layouts is the design choices he makes: instead of using studs everywhere, Carl uses Scale Modelling techniques for making roads, gravel and mountains. This means that not everything in this layout is made out of Lego! The effect works surprisingly well. Instead of looking like a layout made of Lego, this is a layout that uses Lego as one of its mediums.

Carl’s trains in an O-scale layout. Not part of Corfe Castle, but too nice not to show.

As said, the layout not only uses Lego. Carl was nice enough to keep a diary over at Flickr in which he shows how he designed the whole layout. This gives us the great possibility to dive a bit deeper into the layout and the way how it’s build.

When I woke this morning I had planned to write an article about a very different subject. But upon opening my Facebook feed I was greeted with a post I made on my wall 5 years ago, concerning the topic of “Are LEGO® Trains considered real model trains?” The post was spurred by a Eurobricks discussion going on at that time. Bellow is my entire post on the subject from January 2012 (excuse the typos). I found it very interesting to see what my thoughts on the LEGO train hobby were back then, compared to where we are now.

After Elroy followed up on my article about scaled Lego Trains within an already scaled L-gauge environment, this time around with a moving example, I had to follow-up on that one again. For good reasons though. Just check out the video and see it for yourself.